I think TSR was right to publish so much material

[ColonelHardisson]

You know...I totally ignored these but I've heard great things about them from the people who actually bought them....

That said, one of my friends who did buy one said that the comparable GURPS sourcebook would be a better choice if you were given a choice...not that the green books were bad or anything..just tha the GURPS books were better...

I disagree with that, a lot. The GURPS books are good, but are much more crunch-heavy than TSR's books. I think TSR's books go into much greater and better detail on their respective eras than their GURPS counterparts. GURPS has vast library of such books, though, covering just about everything, so they have TSR beat in that respect...but not in quality.

BTW, what era is Age of Heroes supposed to represent

Ancient Greece.

and does't A might Fortress overlap with Age of Charlemage and The Crusades?

No, not really. A Mighty Fortress is more the Renaissance era and a bit after.

 

[LurkMonkey]

Seven of them!

HR1: Vikings Campaign Sourcebook
HR2: Charlemagne's Paladins Campaign Sourcebook
HR3: Celts Campaign Sourcebook
HR4: A Mighty Fortress Campaign Sourcebook
HR5: The Glory of Rome Campaign Sourcebook
HR6: Age of Heroes Campaign Sourcebook
HR7: The Crusades Campaign Sourcebook

If you only have six, then you're missing one

Nope, I misremembered. Thought there was six. Teach me not to Google my facts and try to depend on my memory

 

[Ariosto]

I should have also mentioned in my original post that I waited until the 3e era to pick up about 50% of the pieces of my collection, so in effect, TSR didn't get any cash for them.

TSR may have got cash for them before you got a chance to see them. In the game trade, it works like this:

Publisher -> Distributor -> Retailer -> Customer


It can even work like this:

1) Publisher floats product ideas to distributor
2) Distributor solicits orders from retailers
3) Distributor tells publisher what distributor wants
4) Publisher creates products
5) Distributor buys products from publisher
6) Distributor sells products to retailers on credit
7) Retailers try to sell products to customers

In the book trade (a separate distribution network, so, e.g., Barnes & Noble but probably not Joe's Comix & Hobbies) retailers traditionally have a right of return. It may (to save on shipping) entail sending back only the covers and reporting the books as unsold and destroyed.

That usually does go back to the publisher, and so to the author (who is probably getting robbed of royalties when a book is sold without the cover).

I don't know the usual window of opportunity for returns, or how the shift of ownership from TSR to WotC affected things. I suspect that the option had passed if you bought 2e books at a book store in the 3e era, that the store had already paid for and owned them. If prices were marked down, then I think that is especially likely.

 

[Odhanan]

HR1: Vikings Campaign Sourcebook
HR2: Charlemagne's Paladins Campaign Sourcebook
HR3: Celts Campaign Sourcebook
HR4: A Mighty Fortress Campaign Sourcebook
HR5: The Glory of Rome Campaign Sourcebook
HR6: Age of Heroes Campaign Sourcebook
HR7: The Crusades Campaign Sourcebook

I need to get a hold of those at some point. Thanks for listing them for us.

 

[Wik]

I need to get a hold of those at some point. Thanks for listing them for us.

OF them, I can honestly recommend all of them except for "A Mighty Fortress", which attempts to portray the renaissance. It's definitely a little bland, and a bit broad in focus.

The others, though, are all great. I especially like how you can tie a few of them together to make one super campaign - Age of Heroes + Celts + Glory of Rome + Vikings make an amazing mix.

Glory of Rome is my personal favourite, with the Vikings book coming a very close second. The others, while portraying interesting time periods, didn't catch my attention as much... and this is coming from a guy who (outside of D&D) is fascinated by Celtic and Greek culture and doesn't really care much for Vikings.

The trick is to look at them as starting places, and not necessarily as campaign sourcebooks that will force you to run non-magic games. You can take that Roman book and create a highly fantastic campaign out of it - lord knows I have.

 

[Klaus]

I have Vikings and The Crusades, and I love 'em!

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I have all of them, and the one I consider my favorite changes fairly regularly. The Viking book was my favorite for a long time, followed by the Celts. Recently I've been favoring Charlemagne's Paladins and The Crusades. All of them have ideas that could be adapted for use in just about any edition - the Celts book, for example, has some heroic feats that would fit into 4e as powers with some fiddling.

 

[Lord Captian Tobacco]

Best of luck finding those books. They have been gone a long time.

Though I own each, using them has been 'hit and miss'.
The crusades and Rome gave a wealth of ideas for my Birthright game.
Viking information seems to creep into every barb character.
The Greeks didn't get much attention until after the movie 300 fired them.

But the most use was the Mighty Fortress. I sat down with three players for a three day weekend. (In the military during peace there is plenty of time after hours.) We ended up with three gentlemen of fortune, an Englander, a Frenchman, and a Spaniard. each with a different style of swordplay, each with a different religion, and each convinced of the supremacy of their nation. the fighting was limited to outsiders and the only barbs these guys threw at each other was the bar bill. The whole thing turned into a remake of Rosecrans and Guilderstern are dead complete with one-upmanship and verbal sparing. It was funny. It was crude. It was Tasteless.
And when the weekend was over we never went back. It was too good to mess with by not meetingthe bar we had set before.
I wonder what fun we have missed out on...

 

[wingsandsword]

I also loved the HR series books, really regretted that they never made a historic sourcebook for 3.x, instead going far more into pure fantasy for that edition. I was always disappointed they went to 4e without treading on that ground for 3e. One of the first things I did when 3e came out was make my own homemade conversions of the kits from some of those books into PrC's, and creating new feats based off of some special proficiencies (like the techniques listed in the Celts sourcebook, Gae Bolga became a high-level feat with a pile of pre-reqs that a fighter could take as a bonus feat).

I ran a long-running campaign set during the 3rd Crusade using those sourcebooks, and another not-quite-as-long running campaign with the Rome/Celts/Vikings combination of books listed here.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I also loved the HR series books, really regretted that they never made a historic sourcebook for 3.x, instead going far more into pure fantasy for that edition. I was always disappointed they went to 4e without treading on that ground for 3e.

Green Ronin made a series of fantastic books in their Mythic Vistas line that were along the lines of the HR books, and were as good as anything WotC made for 3e. The Medieval Players Manual is a particular favorite; it was written by one of the better designers for Ars Magica. There was also a book on Rome, one on Greece, one for the age of piracy in the Caribbean, and Testament, which covered the Biblical era. All of them are worth having if one is a d20 player. Necromancer Games produced a book centered on Mesopotamia, which is not quite as faithful to the source material, but which is pretty fantastic and has a feel quite a bit like something you'd find in Conan's Hyboria.